Harris County Officials Encourage Residents To Be Proactive In Protecting From Mosquito Bites

Dr. Umair Shah, executive director of Harris County Public Health (first from the right), participated in a May 15, 2018, press conference where county officials encouraged the public to protect themselves from mosquito bites.

The increasing heat and humidity is conducive for mosquitoes to breed more, and Harris County officials encouraged residents Tuesday to be proactive about protecting themselves from mosquito bites.

During a press conference led by Judge Ed Emmett, Doctor Umair Shah, executive director of Harris County Public Health, highlighted that for the past few years medical experts and the general public have realized, because of cases of Dengue, Chikungunya and Zika, that “the daytime mosquito, the Aedes mosquito, increasingly has also been a real issue across the country.”

Shah also noted that the Centers for Control Disease and Prevention (CDC) recently released a report indicating that diseases spread by mosquitoes, ticks and fleas “have tripled across the country from 2004 to 2016.”

Some of the measures recommended by experts to prevent mosquito bites are using a repellent approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as wearing long sleeves and long pants that cover the skin and regularly draining water accumulated outside of homes and in yards.